


Clipped Whispers

by Violsva



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Great Hiatus, Telegrams, Watson's Woes WAdvent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 05:49:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8737270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: "We have received the strangest telegram, John. I think it must be intended for someone else."





	

**Author's Note:**

> For WAdvent 2016 at [Watson's Woes](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/).

It was Mary who showed me the telegram. I was just finishing my work for the day when I heard the bell. A few minutes later she came into my office.

"We have received the strangest telegram, John," she said. "I think it must be intended for someone else."

I only glanced at the paper. "Aren't these your initials?"

"No, John, my middle name is Elizabeth. It seems to be a lover's note, but it isn't for me, truly."

She was distressed at the suggestion. I read more closely.

> MDW -
> 
> FORGIVE MY LEAVING YOU BUSINESS CALLED STOP WILL TRY TO RETURN WHEN MATTERS ARE SETTLED STOP REMEMBER JANUARY 1881 STOP DO NOT BELIEVE RUMOURS DESPITE REPORTS I REMAIN YOUR DEAR
> 
> \- H

I would have tossed it away, but the date mentioned held me. It was surely a misdirected note between lovers - it was impossible that it was what I was thinking -

"What did the boy say?"

"Jane says he left before she could ask anything. We seem to have the worst luck in finding good servants."

"Perhaps. Yes. I suppose it must be a mistake." But I could not stop looking at that single initial.

“What on earth are you thinking, John?” When I looked up at her I realized she was worried.

“I don’t think it was intended for you,” I said quickly, and she relaxed. “It just seems – well, if Holmes got such a telegram he could have divined the meaning of it at once.”

Mary placed her arm around my shoulders wordlessly.

“I really have no idea what it means,” I said, which was the truth. I was too confused to even try to make sense of it, but of course my thoughts had gone at once to Holmes.

“Mrs. Watson?”

It was the cook. After a few seconds of conversation Mary turned back to me. “John,” she said, and I looked up and focused on her, glad she still had the power to take me out of my thoughts. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”

And yet after she had left I went back to staring at the telegram.

There was no logical basis for my thoughts. I ought to know logic after so many years with him. The initials were wrong -

"My dear Watson." It was as if he was standing next to me.

Reading it again from that point of view, trying to focus on the words instead of my whirling thoughts, everything fit. But there was no reason it could not be what it had seemed at first. Surely many people attached significance to January 1881...

A young man, brilliant and excited and utterly confident in his own abilities. Stretching for the possibility of fame, and reaching it.

I had not even been thirty then; I was forty now. He had changed as well, before...

A tear landed on the desk next to the telegram. I jerked it away from the drop. "Fool," I whispered to myself.

I filed the telegram in the slim year-book marked 1891.


End file.
